Mr. Speaker, I do not want to presume to mediate between the government and the Reform Party on this but the point that is trying to be made by the hon. member is that what the government has done has in some way subverted the rule of law by changing the tax structure in order to deal with a problem which is essentially criminal in nature and that is smuggling.
If we believe in the rule of law, it is not a question of how hard we are on criminals, it is a question of whether we are hard on them at all. In fact what we have done here is simply changed the law in order to accommodate a circumstance that could have been dealt with in other ways.
That is the point I certainly want to make and have the member comment on. There are times when people break the law and we change it because it reflects changing values and changing circumstances, but I am not aware of changing values and changing circumstances that say smuggling is all right and we should therefore not try to deal with that simply by changing taxes.
There is the fundamental question here that the government has avoided. I can understand some of the reasons why it did what it did, but it is fair to say that the rule of law has been subverted by what the government has done. The government has chosen not to enforce law. It has chosen rather to change it.